"Uncle Zoeth said they weren't fresh. I'll open the case in the back room."

Edna stamped her foot.

"We can't wait for that," she declared. "We must go without them, I suppose. Oh, dear! And they depended on us to get them. It's so provoking. Now we can't have any toast at all and it would have been such fun."

Mary-'Gusta glanced once more at the occupant of the keg.

"I was thinking," she said, slowly, "that you needn't both wait unless you wanted to. Perhaps Miss Keith might go on and tell the others and--er--Mr. Smith could stay here until I opened the box. Then he could meet you at the boat."

Edna hesitated. "Shall I, Crawford?" she asked.

Her companion did not hesitate. "I think perhaps you'd better, Edna," he said. "I--I guess I won't be long."

Miss Keith hurried out. Mary-'Gusta turned her attention to the remaining visitor.

"You can get up now," she said. "Some of it will tear off, anyway, and if you hurry you will have time to run home and change your--your clothes."

Crawford was evidently much surprised, also his embarra.s.sment was not lessened; but he rose.

"Then--then you knew?" he stammered.

"Of course I knew. I saw you sit down on it, didn't I? If I'd known what you were going to do I'd have told you to look out. But you did it so quick I couldn't. Now tear off as much as you can."

The young gentleman obeyed orders. "Does it show much?" he queried. "I can't see. Is there much left?"

Mary-'Gusta smiled. His contortions were as violent as they were vain.

"There's enough," she said simply. "Here are the things you bought. Now go out of the back door and cut across the fields. It's the shortest way home."

Mr. Smith took his various parcels, including the six boxes of marshmallows which Mary-'Gusta produced from beneath the counter. "I thought you said these were stale," he observed, wonderingly.

"I said they weren't real fresh, but they're fresh enough for a toast.

I said that so that the Keith girl wouldn't wait. I didn't think you wanted her to."

"You bet your life I didn't! So that's why you said you would have to open the other box? Just--just to help me out?"

"Yes. Now don't stop any longer. You'll have to run, you know. Go out the back way."

Crawford started for the door of the back room, but at that door he paused.

"Say," he said, feelingly, "this is mighty white of you, do you know it?

And after the way I guyed you when I first came in! I guess I was rather fresh, wasn't I?"

"Yes, you were."

"Yes, yes, I guess I was. I thought you were just a country kid, you know, and I--say, by George, you WERE white. If I'd been you I'd have got square. You had the chance; 'twould have served me right for playing the smart Aleck. I beg your pardon. You're all RIGHT! And I'm awfully sorry I was such a chump."

It was a straightforward, honest apology and confession of fault.

Mary-'Gusta was pleased, but she did not show it. He had referred to her as a kid and she did not like that.

"If you don't hurry--yes, and run like everything," she said, "you won't have time to get home and change and meet the others at the boat. And somebody else will see you, too. You'd better go."

The young man went without further delay. Mary-'Gusta watching from the back door saw him racing across the fields in the direction of the Keith cottage. When her uncles returned she said nothing of the occurrence.

She considered it funny, but she knew Crawford Smith did not, and she was sure he would prefer to have the secret kept.

The following afternoon the partners of Hamilton and Company entertained a caller at the store. That evening Shadrach spoke of the call to Mary-'Gusta.

"That young Smith feller that's been visitin' the Keiths was in today,"

said the Captain. "Didn't want to buy nothin'; said he just happened in, that's all. Asked where you was, he did. I didn't know he knew you, Mary-'Gusta."

Mary-'Gusta, who was busy clearing the supper table, answered without looking round. "He and Edna Keith bought some things at the store yesterday," she said.

"Yes, so he said. He said tell you everything was all right and he had a fine time at the picnic. Seemed to cal'late you was a pretty bright girl. We knew that afore, of course, but it was nice of him to say so.

He's leavin' on tomorrow mornin's train. Goin' way out West, he is, to Nevada; that's where he and his dad live. His ma's dead, so he told us.

Must be tough to live so fur off from salt water: I couldn't stand it, I know that. Funny thing about that young feller, too; his face looked sort of familiar to me and Zoeth. Seemed as if he looked like somebody we knew, but of course we didn't know any of his folks; we don't know any Smiths from way off there."

The subject was dropped for the time, but two days later the expressman brought a package to the house. The package was addressed to Miss Mary Augusta Lathrop and contained a five-pound basket of expensive chocolates and bonbons. There was a note with it which read as follows:

Hope you'll like these. They are fresh, at least Huyler's people swear they are, but I don't believe they are as good as those marshmallows.

And I KNOW they are not as fresh as a certain person was at a certain time. Please eat them and forget the other freshness.

C. S.

You were a perfect little brick not to tell.

Mary-'Gusta was obliged to tell then, but she made her uncles and Isaiah promise not to do so. She, with the able a.s.sistance of the other members of the household, ate the contents of the basket in due time. The basket itself was taken to the parlor, where it was given a place beside the other curiosities. As for the note, that disappeared. And yet, if one had investigated the contents of the small drawer of Mary-'Gusta's bureau, where she kept her most intimate treasures, the mystery of its disappearance might have been solved.

It was the only epistle of its kind the girl had yet received; and, after all, good-looking young college men are what they are. And Mary-'Gusta, in spite of her queerness, was feminine--and human.

CHAPTER IX

When Mary-'Gusta was seventeen a great event took place. The happening which led to it was trivial enough, but the results were important and far-reaching. They led to the second great change in her life, a change as important as that brought about by her memorable "visit" to South Harniss.

She was a girl in years still, but tall for her age, and in thought and manner almost a young woman. Her management of her uncles and Isaiah was now complete. They no longer protested, even to each other, against the management and, in fact, gloried in it. The cook and steward accepted her orders concerning the daily marketing and he and she audited the monthly bills. The white house by the sh.o.r.e was a different place altogether now and "chicken-pox tablecloths" and tarnished silver were things of the forgotten past. At the store she had become almost a silent partner, and Hamilton and Company's "emporium" was, thanks to her judgment and tact, if not yet an up-to-date establishment, at least a shop where commodities to be sold were in places where they might be seen by prospective purchasers and readily located by the proprietors.

She spent a good deal of her time, except in school hours, at the store and much of the buying as well as the selling was done by her. The drummers representing New York and Boston wholesale houses knew her and cherished keen respect for her abilities as a selector and purchaser of goods.

"Say," said one of these gentlemen, after a lengthy session during which his attempts to work off several "stickers" had been frustrated by Mary-'Gusta's common sense and discernment--"Say, that girl of yours is a wonder, do you know it? She's the sharpest buyer I ever run across on my trips down here. I don't take a back seat for anybody when it comes to selling goods, and there's mighty little I can't sell; but I can't bluff her. She knows what's what, you hear me!"

Shadrach, to whom this remark was made, chuckled. "You bet you!" he declared, with enthusiasm. "Anybody that gets ahead of our Mary-'Gusta has got to turn out afore the mornin' watch. She's smart. Zoeth and me ain't aboard the same craft with her."

"I should say not. And you can't get gay with her, either. Most girls of her age and as good a looker as she is don't object to a little ragging: they're used to it and they like it--but not her. She isn't fishing for boxes of candy or invitations to dances. That line of talk means good-by and no sale where she is. Business and just business, that's all there is to her. How long are you goin' to keep her here?"

"How long? Why, forever, I hope. What are you talkin' about?"